On the other hand, I had company; Bobbie joined me! She’s been recovering from a bad cold, and just when she thinks she’s getting better, she says, she starts coughing again. Right now she’s getting a bit concerned that her body thinks her current state is normal, that it’s stopped battling whatever’s left of the cold, and how she feels now is as good as she’s going to get.

Kind of brings up an interesting question – are we really only as healthy as we think we are? Lord knows we can think ourselves into a bad mood, and convince ourselves that we’re sick… so it must be possible to do the opposite, yes?

It’s a mind-over-matter technique called the “Law of Substitution,” where we replace a negative thought with a positive one as soon as we notice that our thoughts have drifted in that direction. And it’s effective, no doubt about that, at least as it pertains to good and bad moods, and maybe health too – in the early part of the year, when I was sickening with a cold, it was here and getting worse one day and completely gone the next (which was a real shocker to me, because I hadn’t actually focused on getting better, I was focused on not letting anything stop me from climbing the Bluff every morning). But what exactly is the connection between healthy mind and healthy body? Which one do you have to have first, or do they both develop together?

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘mental health,’ doesn’t it?